This is the second book in the Mystic Isle Mysteriesseries, and it is on sale for ONLY .99 until 2 December 2016!
PREVIEW: Check out the book's synopsis and the Kindle Cloud Reader Preview below.

Author Sally J. Smith & Jean Steffens will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour. Please do take part: comment on our post and follow the tour where you will be able to read other excerpts (☀).

'Tis the season at The Mansion on Mystic Isle, and Melanie Hamilton, resident tattoo artist at the resort renown for its supernatural atmosphere, can feel the holiday spirit everywhere in the Louisiana bayou. The festive mood runs deeper than just the tinsel, mistletoe, and twinkling lights, as the milk of human kindness is flowing with gift giving, good cheer, and donations. But when Papa Noël turns up as dead as the Ghost of Christmas Past, and all the bounty from a recent charity drive is stolen, Melanie turns to Jack Stockton, the resort's handsome general manager, to help her find the killer and get it all back.

Who wanted Papa Noël dead and why? Was it the bag of loot they were after, and Papa just got in the way? Or was it a more personal attack on the jolly man in the red suit? Not only does Mel find herself in a fight to prove one of her co-workers innocent, but she's also in a race against a ticking clock to save the life of a sick child. Before long, she closes in on the killer—or maybe it's the killer closing in on Mel!

Click on the book cover to Look Inside the book on Amazon and read an excerpt.

Mystic Mayhem [1]

From the USA Today bestselling writing team of Sally J. Smith & Jean Steffens comes a hilarious first book in a brand new mystery series that will keep you guessing until the end...

Melanie Hamilton is not your average artist. She brings home the bacon by inking tattoos at New Orleans's Mansion at Mystic Isle, a resort in the middle of the bayou that caters to fans of the peculiar and paranormal, but her true passion comes alive when she volunteers restoring Katrina-ravaged landmarks. Between her day job, her restoration work, and selling her paintings in Jackson Square, Mel's life is more hectic than Bourbon Street on Fat Tuesday. But when a guest of the resort, a millionaire's widow, is poisoned, and Melanie's close friend is arrested for the murder, things go from hectic to downright dangerous.

Mel joins forces with the resort's delish manager, Jack Stockton, to prove her friend's innocence. Soon they find themselves dealing with séances, secret passages, the ghost of the millionaire himself, gators, swamp rats, and a sinister killer who proves that not everything is what it seems in the Louisiana bayou.

The USA Today Best-selling writing team of Sally J. Smith (right brain) and Jean Steffens (left brain) make up equal halves of one totally functional writer’s mind. Creative and intuitive and organized and systematic? What could be better than that?

The two desert dwellers work together side-by-side, literally finishing each other’s sentences, putting together their novels faster and more efficiently than they ever could individually.

When their heads aren’t together over a manuscript, you’ll find them with their families, at a movie, the yoga studio, the mall, or out-to-lunch—in the food sense, not the spaced-out sense, well…most of the time. Their current series include Jordan Welsh & Eddie Marino Novels, Mystic Isle Mysteries, Danger Cove Pet Sitter Mysteries, Aloha Lagoon Gabby LeClair Mysteries, and Digby Sloan Mysteries.

20 comments:

You might wonder what sparked the idea for the Mystic Isle Mysteries? In the Hollywood hills, there’s an awesome private club called the Magic Castle. It’s housed in a spooky Victorian mansion and is one of the most interesting places in the country, maybe even in the world. Magicians are mentored and perform there. It’s creepy and charming and a little hokey all at the same time. Mystic Isle Mysteries is the offspring of our wish to write the equivalent of Scooby-Doo cartoons for grown-ups and our fascination with the Magic Castle. One of those “what ifs” writers come up with all the time—what if there were a hotel that catered to fans of the supernatural as a setting for a cozy series?

We work 3 days a week from 9am to 2pm. After fifteen or so minutes of hey-what’s-new, we take care of the business end of our partnership, then work on our project or projects. We’re currently writing three series: Mystic Isle Mysteries, Danger Cove Pet Sitter Mysteries, and Aloha Lagoon Gabby LeClair Mysteries. It takes a lot of great organization to keep things straight. And while Sally is more right-brained, and I (Jean) is awesomely left-brained and about the most organized person in the state. It takes two to do it all.

Sally and I (Jean) work at two desk side-by-side with 2 large monitors set up attached to our two laptops. Papers, coffee cups, dog treats, and the occasional snacks fill up any clean spots that aren’t already taken up with notes and research. Right now we have holiday music in the background.

I feel I can speak for Sally when I say ~ We make a great writing team.

Our Influences are ~ When we first started writing together, we were both big fans of Robert B. Parker and Janet Evanovich. We are faithful fans of Gemma Halliday's stable of writers'. Sally edits these days and seldom gets to read for pleasure, but when she does, she generally goes outside the genre to Stephen King or Rick Riordan, or any one of a hundred other authors.